In the nano world, light can also "blow" objects. When light shines on an object, it will also exert a force on it, just as the wind blows the sails. From jules verne to Arthur C clark, science fiction writers have fantasized about using the power of sunlight to push the "solar sail" and drive the spacecraft to sail in interstellar space more than once. However, on the earth, the power of sunlight is so small that no one can move an object with sunlight. However, in the journal Nature on June 27th, 165438+ China scholars who are engaged in research at Yale University in the United States published an article, which confirmed for the first time that in the nano-world, light can indeed drive "machines"-nano-machinery made of semiconductors. This research combines two frontier fields of nano-science, namely nanophotonics and nanomechanics. "On the macro scale, the power of light is so weak that no one can feel it. But on the nanometer scale, we find that light has a considerable force, which is enough to drive semiconductor mechanical devices as big as triodes on integrated circuits. " Tang Hongxing, a professor of electronic engineering at Yale University who led the research, introduced this. In fact, physicists and biologists have used the power of light to manipulate atoms and tiny particles in a technology called optical tweezers. "Our research is to integrate light on a small chip and increase its intensity by millions of times, thus manipulating nano-semiconductor devices." Li Mo, the first author and postdoctoral researcher, further explained. In the laboratory of Yale University, two scientists, together with Xiong Chi, a graduate student from Peking University, and their collaborators, used the most advanced semiconductor manufacturing technology to lay a light on a silicon wafer, which is called "light guide". When the light emitted by the laser is connected to such a chip, the light can "flow" along the paved optical conductor line like the current in the conductor. Theoretically, it is predicted that in such a structure, light will exert a force on the wires that guide it. To confirm this prediction, they hung a small piece of light guide only 10 micron long so that it could vibrate like a guitar string. If light does produce force and act on it, then when the intensity of light is modulated to a frequency consistent with the vibration of the light guide, it will produce * * vibration. Such * * * vibration will produce peaks with the same frequency in the transmitted light. This is a convincing phenomenon that three China scientists finally saw on their measuring instruments after more than half a year of experiments and calculations. After that, they proved through a large number of experiments that the magnitude of this force is very consistent with theoretical expectations. Because the speed of light is much faster than the speed of current, the force generated by this light is expected to drive nano-machinery at a speed of several tens of gigahertz (GHz). This research result is expected to give birth to a new generation of semiconductor chip technology-replacing electricity with light. In the future, with this new technology, scientists and engineers can realize high-speed and efficient calculation and communication based on optical and quantum principles.